We sell land clearing leads. Read the rest of this knowing that, and hold it against everything below.
The honest answer is that bought leads are a tool with a narrow job. They are very good at that job and bad at everything else, and most of the contractors who conclude leads are a scam bought them expecting something they were never going to do.
Do the arithmetic before anything else
The only number that matters is your cost per job won, not the price of the lead. Work it out like this:
Lead price / your close rate = what each won job costs you to acquire.
Say leads cost you $30 and you close one in five. That is $150 of lead cost per job you actually win. Against a $2,000 day that is a rounding error. Against a $400 minimum charge job it is a quarter of your revenue before you have burned a drop of fuel.
Those numbers are illustrative. Use your own, and be honest about the close rate rather than the one you would like to have. If you have never tracked it, that is the first thing to fix, because without it you are guessing at whether any marketing works.
When buying leads makes sense
- You have a hole in next week. A machine sitting idle costs you the payment either way. A $30 lead that fills a day is obviously worth it.
- You are testing a new area. Buying a handful of leads in a county you are thinking about working tells you what the demand and the pricing look like before you commit to marketing there.
- You are new and have no pipeline yet. Marketing takes months. Leads work this week. They buy you time to build the thing that lasts.
- Your close rate is genuinely good. If you call fast and quote well, the arithmetic works comfortably.
When they do not
- As your only source of work. You are renting demand. Stop paying and it stops immediately, and you have built nothing you own.
- If you cannot call within the hour. This is the big one. A lead that sits until tomorrow is worth a fraction of the same lead called in ten minutes, and you paid the same for it.
- If your minimum charge is low. The arithmetic gets tight fast on small jobs.
- If you are hoping it fixes a quoting problem. More opportunities do not help if the issue is that you lose them once you get there.
Ask these four questions of anyone selling you leads
- How many contractors get this same lead? Unlimited resale means you are in a race you may lose after paying to enter it. Ours are capped at three and then pulled from sale. Whatever the answer is elsewhere, get it in writing.
- Can I see the job before I pay? County, acreage and scope should be visible up front. If you are buying blind, you are buying their inventory problem.
- Am I signing a contract or a monthly minimum? Plenty of lead companies sell a monthly commitment rather than leads. Those are different products.
- What is the refund position? Leads are sold as-is almost everywhere, including here. Nobody can guarantee a stranger answers their phone. Know that going in rather than being annoyed about it later.
What actually determines whether it works
Speed, mostly. The contractor who calls in ten minutes wins a startling share of shared leads, because being first often matters more than being cheapest. If you cannot answer the phone during the day, have someone who can before you spend anything on leads.
After speed, follow-up. Most bought leads are called once, and if there is no answer they are written off as junk. Three attempts across a week turns a meaningful number of those into jobs. That is free.
The alternatives, honestly
Subcontract work fills a machine without any sales cost at all. Thinner margin, no lead spend, no quoting. For a lot of contractors it is a better answer to the same problem. There is more on that in how to find subcontract work.
Your own marketing is where the compounding is. Google Business Profile, real reviews, town pages, posting the work. Slower, and the only version you keep.
Following up your existing quotes costs nothing and is the most neglected source of work in the trade.
The verdict
Worth buying if you can call fast, you know your close rate, your minimum charge is high enough for the arithmetic to work, and you are using them to fill gaps while you build something you own.
Not worth it if you are hoping to buy a business rather than a job. Nobody sells that.
If you want to see what real listings look like, our board shows the county, acreage and price on every one before you buy. Look at a few and run your own arithmetic on them before you spend anything, here or anywhere else.